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| Front Page Headline |
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| Story on Page 04 |
Provincial walk aimed at
creating awareness of forest desecration
Jeff
Hurst
Cambridge
Times Reporter
1996
Jim Kogelheide is concerned that today’s
generation won’t be leaving anything for the future. In fact, he’s so adamant about protecting our
future, he’s ready to share his vision with the rest of the province.
Kogelheide is currently on a walk from London
to Northern Ontario. His mission is to
create public awareness about the desecration of Ontario’s last remaining old
growth forest in the Temagami area.
During a stop in Cambridge on Wednesday, Kogelheide said he got involved in the walk in order
to develop “a better understanding of man and the natural world and how we live
with it.”
Kogelheide left London on August 13 along with
expedition partners Alan Trakinskas, Jim Mikol, Jack Boyle and Mia the wonder
dog.
The first stage of the tour involved stops and
presentations in Ingersoll, Woodstock, Stratford, New Hamburg, Waterloo,
Kitchener Cambridge and Guelph. The team
will then drive from Guelph to Toronto due to lack of grass (for Mia’s paws) between those
cities. From Toronto, it will be the
start of what Kogelheide called The Temagami Trail Tribute, which will see them
walking to Temagami located north of North Bay.
The team got together after realizing that any
form of protest to stop clearcutting of the province’s oldest forest growth
dates back to 1989. Back then, people
physically closed roads in order to stop logging. “It’s been seven years since then,” explained
Kogelheide. “Times have changed and lots
of methods back then haven’t been too conclusive.”
Along with the walk itself, the expedition team
is hoping to create a groundswell of public awareness through a letter writing
campaign in order to convince Minister of Natural Resources Chris Hodgson to
cancel the clearcutting which is expected to take place in the near future.
Kogelheide said they hope to arrive in Temagami
in late September. He then hopes to
deliver letters to Hodgson following the walk.
Though the Temagami Trail Tribute has been
fortunate enough to have assistance from a variety of sponsors, the team is
surviving on donations. Any money left
over following expedition expenses will go towards the eco-tourism industry in
Temagami.
Notes about this article by Jim Kogelheide 2015
1)
The
article does continue on for three more paragraphs, but the information is
irrelevant at this point so I didn’t copy it in this format.
2)
I have
made two amendments to this article – both of which are written in italics
print.
3) It’s mentioned that the
portion of our walk from Toronto to Temagami was called The Temagami Trail
Tribute and that is a little incorrect.
The walk from London, Ontario to Toronto bore that name.
4) We had no money left over
from this walk – in fact it took us a while to pay off the small debt that we
incurred – and so no donation to the Temagami eco-tourism industry was ever
made.
5) This journey was very
inspiring and exhausting and after having reached Toronto we realized that we
just couldn’t complete the second portion of our walk all the way to Temagami,
so we had to be satisfied with what we had accomplished.
6) This is the map showing the walking route that we took to visit all the 9 Southern Ontario towns. Presentations were held in the towns marked with a circle.
7) Alan Trakinskas and I both
made separate journeys to Temagami, shortly after this walk… but that’s another
story!
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